Scheduled.

I can't remember what it was like to NOT live by my Daily Planner.

To have a day or several days where I had nowhere to be, no obligations to keep, no responsibilities.
Where I could sleep late or stay up until the wee hours of dawn, if I wanted to.
Where I could nap whenever I wanted to.
And eat any sort of crap that I wanted to.

I know of places in this world, where the residents have specifically arranged their lives in such a way that they don't have to deal with the sorts of schedules that I keep. Their homes, which they built or their fathers built, exist in green places, located down hills and windy, twisty asphalt roads. They have creeks nearby and a lake where you can go skinny dipping, if you want to. And if modesty overcomes you, you can pile the lakebed mud over your unmentionables and hide them in that way. (I've lost entire conversational threads, willing a mud brazziere to slide off, using only the hot sun and my mind powers. Eventually, it did.)

A place where you see cows and horses more often than the mailman.

And the people who live there are good people.

They take care of their finances and their responsibilities. They mend their homes when they need to. They remember birthdays and anniversaries. They garden. They'll be the first one to pack the pipe for you and give you a comfortable seat on their front portch, if you want it.

They don't live a life that is as packaged, processed and marketed as you and I live and yet, they do it with pride. They are happy people. This busy, fast, loud, self-important world is irrelevant to their lives.

I am, of course, speaking of friends that I made back in the green hills of Kentucky.

Good people who showed me what a starry night looks like without ambient light off of a city blocking them out. (The Milky Way is visible to the naked eye in those times.)

I have a sinking suspicion that they've got something figured out that I haven't grasped yet.